US authorities can get access to EU citizens'
data on phone calls, sms' and emails, giving a recent EU data-retention
law much wider-reaching consequences than first expected, reports Swedish
daily Sydsvenskan.

The EU data retention bill, passed in February after
much controversy and with implementation tabled for late 2007, obliges telephone
operators and internet service providers to store information on who called
who and who emailed who for at least six months, aimed at fighting terrorism
and organised crime.

A week later on 2-3 March, EU and US representatives
met in Vienna for an informal high level meeting on freedom, security and
justice where the US expressed interest in the future storage of information.

The US delegation to the meeting "indicated that
it was considering approaching each [EU] member state to ensure that the
data collected on the basis of the recently adopted Directive on data retention
be accessible to them," according to the notes of the meeting.

Representatives from the Austrian EU presidency and
from the European Commission said that these data were "accessible
like any other data on the basis of the existing ... agreements" the
notes said.

The EU representatives added that the commission would
convene an expert meeting on the issue.

Under current agreements, if the FBI, for example,
is interested in a group of EU citizens from a member state who are involved
in an investigation, the bureau can ask for help with a prosecutor in that
member state.

The national prosecutor then requests telephone operators
and internet service providers for information, which is then passed on
to the FBI.

This procedure opens the way for US authorities to
get access under the EU data-retention law, according to the Swedish newspaper.

In the US itself meanwhile, fury has broken out in
the US congress after reports revealed that the Bush administration covertly
collected domestic phone records of tens of millions of US citizens since
the attacks in New York on 11 September 2001.

President George Bush did not deny the allegations
in a television statement last night, but insisted that his administration
had not broken any laws.